12 posts from December 2006

289. Charlie Daniels Band "Trudy"

In record-geek conversations I've had over the years, plenty of groups have been nominated as 'The World's Greatest Bar Band,': George Thorogood & the Destroyers, Skynyrd. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that the best bar rock song is this one right here.

Charle Daniels has caught a lot of flak over the years for his rightward-leaning politics (although, somewhat paradoxically, he's also the man behind the hippie anthem "Uneasy Rider"), but nobody ever said the man couldn't play the fiddle. His credentials are solid, having played with the likes of Bob Dylan and written songs recorded by Elvis Presley.

This song is an anomaly in that it dosen't feature Daniels fiddle. No matter, though. This riverboat gambler tall-tale song, with it's stomping beat, rollicking cowboy-movie piano and a chorus that goes beyond infectious straight to contagious, positively reeks of the atmosphere in a rowdy dive on a Saturday night. Drink up.

290. Ly-Dells "Three Little Monkeys"

This is one of the few songs on this list that I can tell you next to nothing about. I must've found it p2ping. I probably dug the group name and I'm a sucker for songs that mention monkeys. After hearing the song, I did the usual Googling and found next to nothing. The tag reveals that it was released on a label called 'Southern Sound' so I'll assume it was recorded in the South, although it sounds more influenced by northeastern vocal groups like The Coasters, at least to my ear. The release date given is 1965, and this sound must've been somewhat antiquated even then.

No matter, the record oozes puppy-dog charm with every note. The galloping beat and baritone vocals deliver the irresistible hook with a charm that suggests that this was somebody's shot at big time stardom, even though it sounds like it was recorded in someone's basement. They never made the big time, obviously, but hearing mysterious attemps like this is one of the joys of collecting music.

291. James McMurtry "Levelland"

This is pretty much the best song yet about living in George W. Bush's 'Red State' America. James McMurtry is the son of Pulitzer Prize winning author Larry McMurtry and he shares his father's eye for telling detail and compassion for everyday people. And he has the additional blessing of a vocals that sound like the voice of hard-won wisdom and an ear for what well-placed guitar chords can do to bring a message home.

This composition was supposedly written about a friend of McMurtry's who was a Marxist who grew up in a small town in Texas. He pulls no punches about the loneliness such a person suffers ('they never had much use for me...') but he also admits that the pain he feels at his isolation is partly due to the compassion he feels for the people surrounding him ('Listen to the marching band/they're doing the best they can..')

The conflicts in the song are left unresolved, and it's so much the better for that since they're unresolved in the world at large, too, and McMurtry is one of our best chroniclers of our current situation.

292. Geechie Wiley "Last Kind Word Blues"

The standard definition of 'blues' to the uninitiated is 'sad music.' Even a cursory examination of self-proclaimed blues music could show you that it runs the gamut of human emotion as much as any other genre.

However, early country blues could communicate deep, deep sorrow like no other music. Geechie Wiley's (a mysterious woman about whom precious little is known)  subdued wail against the keening guitar despairs of ever even hearing another kind word. Yet for all it's despair the song contains a sense of abiding in it's circumstances, which is saddening on a whole other level.

(Geechie's music is used to good effect as a minor plot device in Jack Womack's excellent 'alternate history' novel Going, Going Gone, for you fans of interesting cultural connections.)

293. El Chords "Peppermint Stick"
294. Archies "Bang Shang A Lang"

Today you get a thematically linked doubleheader, cats and kittens, with a soft candy center, as it were.

First, the Archies, the animated face of that most loathed genre-bubblegum. If punk is nothing more than rock boiled down to it's simplest essence, and hip-hop the same for funk, then bubblegum is basically pure pop distilled down to the core elements of a solid beat and a catchy chorus. This song perfects the distillation process until we have the kiddie-pop equivalent of 190-proof white lightning, with it's relentlessly singable hook, ringing slieghbells, and bouncing beat. Purely manufactured pop to be sure, but unlike the Britney's and Backstreet Boys of today, the people in the manufacturing process seemed to know (and more importantly, care) about what they were doing. And to be pop in the mid-1960's meant paying at least token acknowledgement to rock and roll, since it so dominated pop culture at the time, and this song does that and more. Fun trivia, Archies lead vocalist (and omnipresence in the bubblegum scene) Ron Dante (born Carmine Granito) was later a neighbor and friend of George Plimpton, and briefly served as publisher of the Paris Review.

The El Chords hymn to a minty confection features vocals from Little Butchie Saunders that sound like the Jackson Five ten years early. More than just about any other doo-wop number, this track sounds like it was recorded on a street corner by a flaming garbage can. The bass vocal perfectly counterpoints Saunders lead and the chorus infects your brain almost immediately. The only way this record could be more streetcorner New York would be to have a subway train in the background and the drums and piano do a pretty good approximation.

295. Dion "Lookin' For The Heart Of Saturday Night"

Dion, the aging king of Bronx Italian Doo-Wop heard Tom Waits acoustic-based ode to barroom melancholy and decided that what it really was was an upbeat strutter. And, somehow he makes it work. The relaxed assurance of Dion's voice and the easy swing of the piano and sax definitely help.

Dion was well past his "The Wanderer"/"Runaround Sue" prime when he cut this, and appropriately the swagger in this song is subdued and wistful, like an aging cool guy who knows his time is past but who still likes getting out to see the bright lights once in a while. That's an idea rarely referenced in youth-obsessed rock and roll, and this song captures it wonderfully.

296. Dirtbombs. "Livin' For The City"

Musically speaking, Detroit, Michigan has two major legacies to contend with: the smooth soul of Motown Records and the gritty, industrial (yet tellingly still R&B-inflected) protopunk of the Stooges, MC5, Alice Cooper et al.

In recent years, several bands, such as the Detroit Cobras, the White Stripes and others have attempted to fuse these two sounds with mixed success. The earliest band to attempt this idea way back in the mid-1980's was known as The Gories, which featured the gutsy vocals and ominous guitar of Mick Collins. The Gories fell apart and then begat the Dirtbombs, who continued in much the same vein.

This cover of Stevie Wonder's 70's funk classic is the most succesful fusion of the two styles to my ears. Mick Collin's vocals impart a grit that Wonder's version never managed, and the huge, buzzy bass guitars (yup, plural) are a great evocation of urban confusion. Moving the protagonists home from 'Hard Times, Mississippi,' to Tijuana is an inspired touch as is the dropping the occasional Spanish lyric. The Motor City is ragged but right, as they say.

297. Rose Tattoo "The Butcher And Fast Eddie"

Australia in the late 1970's and early 80's was a breeding ground for tough hard rock. One group, a rowdy bunch from Sydney led by a short tattoo covered guy with a shaved head, with the ominous name of 'Angry' Anderson, led the pack. They made AC/DC, the most famous graduates of the scene seem like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir by comparison. Their secret weapon was the gritty, bluesy slide guitar of the late (as of November, 2006) Peter Wells.

The bluesy doom of Well's playing complements the declamatory rage of Anderson's vocals perfectly on this number. If Bruce Springsteen's "Jungleland" is The Godfather of rock and roll street-opera songs, then this tune is the Goodfellas, the one that strips away the mythology and romanticism and leaves you with nothing but the violence and rage. Yet it still concludes with an inspiring ending.

(I'll be enjoying the holidays with family tommorow and the day after, so the next installment will be posted late Christmas day or the next day. Enjoy the tunes and Happy Holidays to you and yours.)

298. Eternals "Babalu's Wedding Day"

From the New Wave of British Heavy Metal we take a sharp turn into the land of Doo-Wop. In the early days of rock and roll, one of the big criticism that it's enemies levelled at it was that it was nothing but nonsensical racket. In this case they were right, and thank goodness. As Dave Marsh describes this tune in his tome The Heart of Rock and Soul*:

The Announcement that Babalu (apparently a household name in whatever universe this song is situated) is finally getting hitched sends an entire society into frantic activity. Some laugh. Some sigh. We learn that he met his fiance, Hoskie Bopalena, at a Milwaukee Braves baseball game. Then it seems, Babalu misses the ceremony because his cheapskate friend refuses to lend him a dime to call for a ride. So he goes to work with a trained monkey, who steals all the cash and runs away as soon as the day is over. That's it.... That is, if I've gotten any of the details right. Amidst all the racket it's hard to be sure.

With the clattering percussion and off-kilter vocals, this song is probably the ultimate example of rock and roll as absurdist fable, and absurdism is an idea close to my heart, obviously.

*It was Marsh's description, that I first read at age 19, that inspired me to try and hunt this tune down. A few weeks after I read it, it was played by Cousin Brucie on the (now deceased) WCBS-FM, the greatest oldies station ever, featuring hyper-adenoidal DJ's bathed in echo. I grew up hearing that staion from the back seat of my parents' car. But I'm willing to bet the song was requested by some doo-wop geek who had read Marsh's book. Rarely has a review been so accurate. Proof that geeking out over (the right) rock criticism has it's rewards. I eventually got a hold of a reissue 45 via a neighborhood oldies shop where a friend was the owner.

Marsh's book (a list of his favorite 1001 singles (I impose no such restrictions on my list) )has been hugely influential for his exquisite taste and the wit and clarity of his writing. I met the guy at a signing years later. He was cool. But plenty of people have constructed file sharing libraries around his list, and rightly so.

299. Bruce Dickinson "Tattooed Millionaire"

After punk rock hit, old fashioned heavy metal of the Deep Purple/Black Sabbath school found itself in a quandary. It could either adapt or find itself trapped in a musical La Brea Tarpit. So a movement arose that kept the flash and aggression of old school heavy rock, but stripped away the rock star bloat and upped the aggro quotient for the disaffected delinquents that made up the core of the metal audience. This movement was known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Some bands arose from it to become superstars, others sunk into obscurity. One band at the forefront was called Iron Maiden. Their original lead vocalist was a guy named Paul Dianno, an ex-skinhead, who was long on charisma and stage presence, but short on vocal ability. When he and the rest of the band parted ways, they hired a kid from Sheffeild, England raised in a family that could be described as 'middle class with pretensions,' who was expelled from boarding school for pissing in his headmasters' dinner. During a brief abortive college career, he roadied for the Clash and absorbed a few lessons about the world. This kid's name was Bruce Dickinson. Equipped with a voice of Wagnerian proportions that complemented the epic dual guitar attack of his band perfectly, they road on to multiplatinum success. However, bassist Steve Harris wrote most of the songs for Maiden and his subject matter leaned toward the arcane: the occult, warfare, adaptations of Coleridge poems. When Dickinson stepped out on his own, he unleashed something unexpected, the riveting bellow of negation above. Obviously inspired by his encounters with the  LA hairmetal crowd, this song is a seeting indictment of rock star exces that would do the likes of Kurt Cobain or Ian McKaye proud, and it's all the more powerful for being delivered from somebody who's already been inside the beast he speaks off. And Dickinson wisely couches his rejection in music of anthemic proportions and lyrics dripping with venom. The chorus says in no uncertain terms what he's throwing away. And rarely has rejection sounded this affirming.